I didn’t really foresee becoming a camera club judge at any time, it’s just sneaked up on me and now I’m an accredited judge with the Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Union!

My first judging was not planned, I was just helping out in my mind. It was a judging career that nearly ended right there as I overthought it and poured over the images time and again, spending way too many hours assessing & reassessing comments and scores. I was invited to attend a judge training event which answered some basic questions that I had, then I needed to gather a series of positive reviews of my performance to become an Accredited judge. I’m now the holder of a certificate and badge issued by the L&CPU that gives me some confidence that I can tell the difference between the stronger and weaker images entered into competitions and then deliver useful comments on them.

When judging a competition, the stronger images jump out, and are generally quickly recognised as such, similarly, the weaker images also make themselves obvious too. I find that it’s those average images that are not quite strong enough to gain an award but are not poor images either that challenging me most in my commenting. Sometimes quite competent images that are technically fine just don’t have that little bit of ‘something else’ to raise them up a bit.

From a personal perspective, it has given me opportunity to see a larger and wider range of images, both in digital and printed formats. I often see images nowadays, that I wouldn’t have done previously, that really inspire me to go and try other things. As with all things I seem to get involved with I’ve got one eye on the future and wondering how far my judging will take me – will I get invitations to judge at National and International standards? – I really hope so.